Nuclear or Missile Attack
Although the full details of the incident are yet to appear, it is broadly believed the blast was a result of an accident involving highly explosive materials. However, many believes that it was a very high and massive explosion. Among those suggesting a deliberate attack may have been carried out was US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration offered no further explanation about the apparent
"attack" and did not respond to Middle East Eye’s request for
comment. Some on social media posted videos and images of black objects
flying near the blast site to suggest a missile may have been involved.
Israeli Attack
Initially many social media users put blame on Israel for the attach and connecting the recent threatening tweets of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Hezbollah.
Netanyahu warned after touring a military base in the Israeli city of Ramle on Tuesday: “We hit a cell and now we hit the dispatchers. We will do what is necessary in order to defend ourselves. I suggest to all of them, including Hezbollah, to consider this.”
The PM was referring to the Israeli army, claiming to have prevented a Syrian government attack along the border in the occupied Golan Heights on Monday, targeting four people who had apparently planted explosives.
The comments came as tensions had risen in the area after a Hezbollah fighter was killed in an apparent Israeli strike on the edge of Damascus. Despite the timing of Netanyahu’s tweet, there is little evidence to suggest Israel was targeting Hezbollah in Beirut. An Israeli military source denied carrying out the attack, stating that it was “not a security-related event”.
Hezbollah
An old 2017 video of Hezbollah’s Secretary
General Hassan Nasrallah threatening to attack Israel’s Haifa port, in which he
speaks of the "nuclear-like" explosion caused by ammonium nitrate,
was widely shared. Others re-posted a tweet from the Israeli army supposedly
showing the location of an Iranian and Hezbollah "missile
project". Despite these videos and images reappearing, Lebanese
officials have maintained that the site of the blast was a warehouse storing
confiscated materiel, with no suggestion that it was a Hezbollah depot.
Turkish Cargo
On Tuesday, Abbas Ibrahim, Lebanon’s head of General Security, said “the explosion took place in a warehouse of high-explosive material confiscated for years”.
This has led to theories and rumors about from whom the explosive substance was confiscated. Some Twitter users have pointed the finger at a supposed Turkish shipment headed for Syria. This theory has been proven to be false.
The chemicals originally arrived at Beirut's port on board a Russian-owned cargo vessel flying a Moldovan flag in September 2013.At the time, the shipping monitoring organization ShipArrested.com reported that "upon inspection of the vessel by Port State Control, the vessel was forbidden from sailing”.
“Most crew except the master and four crew members were repatriated and shortly afterwards the vessel was abandoned by her owners after charterers and cargo concern lost interest in the cargo." According to documents posted online and seen by Al Jazeera, the ship's dangerous cargo was then offloaded and placed in hangar 12.
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